Meaning:
In a superior or advantageous position.
Background:
This is an American phrase - which is unsurprising as the grey catbird which
is the probable source of the phrase is a North American species (there's
also an Australian catbird). It's one of a group of birds called the mimic
thrushes. They include mockingbirds and, as you might expect, they are adept
mimics. The catbird is named for its ability to mimic the sound of a cat's
miaow.
Catbirds seek out the highest perches in trees to sing and display. The
allusion to that is most likely to be the derivation of the term. It may also
be the source of an earlier term with much the same meaning - `sitting
pretty`.
There's certainly an association with the sport of baseball, and most of the
early citations of the phrase mention the game. That includes the first
mention of it in print, in James Thurber's 55 Short Stories from New Yorker,
November 1942:
"She must be a Dodger fan. Red Barber announces the Dodger games over the
radio and he uses those expressions... `sitting in the catbird seat' means
sitting pretty, like a batter with three balls and no strikes on him."
- www.phrases.org.uk [edited]
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A miaowing bird sounds amazing! I wonder where to see a live one and if there is
a dogbird that barks and what the neigborhood cainines would make of it. I've
heard neither, I think, but I could be wrong.
I have listened to the mourning birds, however, in both the east and south bay
where I have lived. They look like tawny doves and make their distinctive calls
by puffing up their chests like baloons and then deflate them in stages while
blaring out three ethereal notes, the first longer than the next two. To me,
they don't sound sad at all.
